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Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Organization (CD-R edition)

Reading through a recent post by Kev, I have to address an ever-growing puzzle for myself as a music fan: how to organize my CD-Rs. I have my reasons for organizing my CDs with jewel cases, but CD-Rs with no jewel cases? Different sort of thing.

I distinctly remember back in high school when I asked my friend Tim why he alphabetized his ever-growing CD collection: "So I can find 'em." Suddenly in that moment, the reason to do this made complete sense to me, and I have always alphabetized my CDs since then. But the thought never occurred to me when I started burning CDs in college. Since my collection was small, I never thought about doing that. Now I've amassed hundreds of CD-Rs and a vague idea of where each one is.

I think how I organize my CD-Rs is based on when and where in my life I got them. But in hopes I don't sound like Rob Gordon from High Fidelity, this is not a filing by autobiography. There was a time when I burned a lot of XTC, Idlewild, and the Pernice Brothers records because I kept hearing raves about them in The Big Takeover in 2002 and 2003. So it makes sense they are close together in this one full-sized spindle. Criteria like that is how I find the discs, but it takes a few tries to find a particular CD-R I want.

Of course, this makes finding something difficult quite often, and I wonder why I don't just alphabetize them. Well, I counter that with the enjoyment of finding a different CD-R I have either not heard in a long time or neglected, and I want to hear it again. That's happened quite a bit, and I enjoy the experience.

Yet the easy way out of all of this organization quandary is to rip all of my CDs into a humongous hard drive and go from there. But since I like holding CDs in my actual hands, I choose to not do that. And that includes CD-Rs believe it or not.